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Comment by jonahbenton | Hacker News Reader

This very much happens to me. What has been so odd about understanding it is that I don't detect the sustained attention problem as dehydration or thirst. I detect it as hunger or a general malaise, a need to be woken up, for which the answer can feel like- should consume caffeine. Neither food nor caffeine help.

If my system 2 is able to intercept this processing and logically hypothesize- try plain water first- after starting to drink water I then realize I am very thirsty, and will consume 24-32 oz very quickly. Afterwards I feel great, re-energized.

But my body/autonomous system 1 still hasn't learned this, and it has now been a few years since first making this realization. So odd.

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Similar for me. It feels like hunger, or sleep deprivation. I think it's detected by system 2, from an awareness of cognition not being great, in general. It's like a touch of delirium.

Hunger as a response to mild dehydration makes sense though. We get a significant proportion of our water intake from food. That instinct doesn't work quite as well in our engineered era of potato chips, but that's a recent problem.

Same experience here. Now that I know I will be drinking more water.

> Hunger as a response to mild dehydration makes sense though. We get a significant proportion of our water intake from food.

This is truer than I used to think. Our dogs are mostly on a raw diet - some days I don't even see the older one drink water, or just once (the younger one is still an idiot puppy so runs around and goes to the toilet a lot more and has to top up). When we look after dogs on a kibble diet, it's amazing how much they drink in comparison.

One of the first things you learn in survival training is the difference between hunger and thirst.

Most of the time when your stomach starts to "grumble" you might be surprised how often it's thirst and not hunger.

Personally I wake up and I feel "starving", but the reality is that I'm just really thirsty because I haven't had any water for 6-8 hours.

You can go weeks without food, but typically can only last a day or two at a absolute maximum without water.

> I don't detect the sustained attention problem as dehydration or thirst. I detect it as hunger or a general malaise

So I have trouble differentiating these. The trick is to figure out which ones you're least susceptible to. For me it's hunger. So when I consciously feel that tired/hungry/thirsty feeling, I know it's sleep or thirst, and based on how you slept, you can usually deduce whether you need a nap or glass of water.

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